Bid for Wine begins direct importing

Online auctioneer Bid for Wine is expanding operations to include wine importation to the UK.

Online fine wine auctioneer Bid for Wine is turning to wine importation

Website founder Lionel Nierop hopes the new service will encourage existing bidders for fine wine to “bulk out” their orders with more affordable lines.

“This is a new tactic for us,” Nierop stated at an event this week.

“I think it [importing wine] is an opportunity because if someone is only buying a few bottles at auction for shipping, they might want to bulk that out to a case or more,” he added.

Continuing he said, “And if they are buying fine wine at auction, they should also be looking for wines to drink everyday too.”

Nierop’s first shipment into the UK was shown to members of Tom Cannavan’s UK Wine Forum at London’s Vinoteca restaurant in Farringdon on Wednesday evening.

Having brought in 300 cases of Oregon’s Torii Mor, he held a small event comprising dinner and a blind tasting of the winery’s Pinot Noirs mingled with a couple of grands crus Burgundies.

Bid for Wine is offering customers a case of Torii Mor for £300

Despite the high price of the wines from the Côte d’Or, attendees of the event preferred the wines from Oregon, which Nierop was selling for £300 for a mixed case.

Nierop chose to import the wines from Oregon having tasted them at this year’s London International Wine Fair in May.

“I really liked the wines – they are delicate and quite Burgundian, particularly from the 2007 vintage – and we don’t see much Oregon Pinot Noir over here,” he said.

Speaking more generally of the Bid for Wine operation, he said that he was “starting the next stage of the business,” with a “serious re-write of the site”.

“We are turning from essentially a one man band to something more commercially focused,” he added.

He also said that he would consider importing further wines into the UK.

“If we find interesting parcels of unusual wines, we would like to sell them.”

Bid for Wine’s 6,000 registered customers tend to “dip in and out” when it comes to buying according to Lionel.

“A lot of them wait on the sidelines and jump in when interested,” he explained.

However, he felt that because they are “used to buying esoteric stuff” the wines from Torii Mor, particularly from the more challenging and less celebrated 2007 vintage in Oregon, would hold appeal.

The wines are being made by French winemaker Jacques Tardy, who has been with Torii Mor since 2004, and the estate uses grapes from vineyards in the Dundee Hills planted in 1972.

Torii Mor’s unusual name was created by owner Dr. Donald Olson, with Torii referring to the ornate gates often seen at the entrances to Japanese gardens – as well as at the winery – and Mor being an ancient Scandinavian word for earth.

Together, the words mean “Gates to the Earth”.

For more information about Bid for Wine click here.